Celebrating the Urs of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, Part I: The Song

[May 27 is the day this year when Sufis will observe the 764th Urs – or death anniversary – of the saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar. I have posted about this anniversary, this saint, and these Sufis before, but since most of the song clips that I used have disappeared, I am going to post about the song and the event from scratch here, meaning no links to other posts. And this is going to be a pretty big post, so I’m dividing it into two parts. The first is about THE song… I’m going to write a bit more about this song than I did before, and I am going to include a few versions. Some are versions I have shown in this blog before, but I also found a few very good ones that I had not seen or shown here yet. I have also discovered a little about the composer of the music… And that is enough for Part I. Part II will be about the Urs celebration – the whole Sufi saint festival. I might post that part at the time of the festival or, hopefully, not long afterwards.]

The Song – Descriptions and History

Although I am an agnostic (with distant Jewish heritage), I also feel as though I am an emotional/musical devotee of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar because of this incredibly compelling song, which I am sure has made millions of other people want to be worshipers of the red-robed Sufi saint, too. Incidentally, the “red-robed one” is also referred to as Jhulelal – which is actually the name of a Sindhi Hindu god, but the two figures were apparently mixed together as Hindus switched to Islam or maybe as some Muslims switched to Hinduism – it is a bit confusing… But Lal Shahbaz Qalandar was actually known for bringing the two groups together and for bringing peace and harmony between them.

I think I forgot to name the song so far. Well, it has different names. The poem it is based upon is “Dama Dam Mast Qalandar,” but I think that when it first became the popular song sung in modern times – which began with Pakistani films – it was referred to by its beginning line (as many film songs are), “Lal Meri Pat Rakhiyo,” and we still often see it referred to by that title or just “Lal Meri Pat.” Those are the Punjabi names. But there is also a Sindhi variation (as there should be, because it is a song about Sindhis), that begins, “Lal Muhinji Pat.”

This poem was initially written by the 13th Century Sufi poet Amir Khusro, but it was modified by the 18th Century Sufi poet Bulleh Shah, who is the one who actually made it specifically about Lal Shahbaz Qalandar. (By the way, I probably got that information first from Wikipedia; their post is pretty readable and to the point.) The lyrics are said to be full of cultural symbolism, but basically, they comprise a colorful praise of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar for being the great protector of Sindhi people. For a good viewing of the lyrics in Punjabi and English, I suggest going to Technology of the Heart.

A lot of people know about the origins of the poem, the Sufi poets, etc. What most people don’t seem to know about is the man who composed the music for this song – that is, the music that the famous Sufi poem has been sung to by thousands or millions of people over the last several decades. That man is the Pakistani film composer Master Ashiq Hussain.

A Few Classic Film Clips

The first time Master Hussain used this song was in a Pakistani film, Jabroo, from 1956. I have been able to find one copy of this version on YouTube. As the YouTube poster “tmjatala” admits, this copy is a bit screwed up and scratchy but is well worth having and viewing for historic reasons.

This song became much more popular – in many parts of the world – a little over a dozen years later, because of the rendition sung by Noor Jehan in the film Dilan Dey Souday, which came out in 1969. This is the version that permanently planted “Lal Meri Pat” on my mental map as well. As many know, Noor Jehan sang this song as a playback singer for two different actresses in two different dances. A lot of people praise the one by Firdous, but if I’m going to pick one version out of the movie to show, it’s always going to be the incredible performance by Naghma.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf8l5RFE7Xs]

Another classic film version came out about seven years later, in 1973. This time it was sung by Inayat Hussain Bhatti and Masood Rana, picturized on Bakshi Wazir, in the film Dhian Nimanian. This is a superb rendition, by the way.

And, of course, there were many more film versions after that, but those were the classics that I felt I absolutely had to show (this time around).

There are some contemporary film versions out, too. One, which was discussed on this blog before, is a Bollywood scene involving gangsters and a wedding. The scene, in my view, is full of contemporary Bollywood clichés, and I am honestly not that enamored with it. I’m sure that a few people know which one I’m talking about; there’s no need to go into it more here.

There is a very contemporary film version that I have become enamored with… Actually, as of this writing, the film hasn’t come out yet. The film is Dhanak, and it looks very sweet. I don’t know anything about the singers or performers in this video, but they’re all pretty good. There is an English part sung along with “Lal Meri Pat” that is a sort of paraphrase of an old John Lennon song. That part is performed by a stereotypical white American hippie, and he is very funny – but not bad, actually. The part performed by the young boy is fantastic.

A Kathak Dance

A lot of people choreograph dances to “Lal Meri Pat,” and it often works out very nicely. In addition to watching musical performances of the song and film scenes created for it, I’ve enjoyed looking at a bunch of live dance clips. I could add quite a few of them here, and maybe I will in the future. But right now, I’ll stick with one favorite by the contemporary Kathak dancer V. Anuradha Singh. She is great at spins and often performs a Sufi-Kathak fusion. Her dance is, as one commenter put it, “unique.”

[I have to add, though, that listening to this one, I don’t hear the “Lal Meri Pat” melody. Is it that this is the end part (where everybody tends to improvise), or is it a different dhamal? It’s such a fine dance, though, I am tempted to leave it in regardless.]

A Performance at the Shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar

And I’ll close with something I’ve posted before, a performance at the red-robed one’s shrine by the mostly California-based qawwali group, Fanna-Fi-Allah Sufi Qawwali Party. I’ve also seem some other performances that took place at Lal Qalandar’s shrine, but this one is particularly fun to watch, shot so well and with lots of joy put into it. And it is a good way to close this post, as a preview to Part II, where I’ll post more about the shrine and the festival.

——————————-

P.S. Let the main part of this post end on an upbeat note… But unfortunately, I do have something rather sad to add… I have found a video from Dawn.com (posted to Vimeo) about the musical composer, Master Ashiq Hussain, and it is not very cheery at all. Though he composed one of the most famous tunes in the history of South Asian cinema (as well as a lot of other fine music), Master Hussain and his family were left in poverty. Unfortunately, this is not a unique story. There have been so many actors, singers, etc. in Indian cinema and – maybe more so – Pakistani cinema whose lives ended in poverty. But depressing though this video may be, it is also very interesting and informative.

——————————-

P.P.S. Last week, shortly after I started to plan this post, I happened upon an article at Scroll.in by my Facebook friend Nate Rabe, Mustt mustt: From Turkey to the US, seven international tributes to the legacy of Dam Mast Qalandar. Nate’s post is very different in ways, because it consists completely of contemporary international versions of the song. But he also goes into some details about the original poem, and I am sure that influenced me a little. If Nate hadn’t described those origins of the song so well, maybe I also would not have thought so much about the origins of the song. In any event, I also recommend it for the interesting music.

20 comments on “Celebrating the Urs of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, Part I: The Song”

Thank you for this, Richard! That was very informative – I hadn’t known about Ashiq Hussain (I always thought the tune was a traditional folk tune, possibly because I remember having heard a Rajasthani folk singer render it on Indian TV, back in the 80s… I realize now that it was most likely just another instance of popular music being given a very folksy twist). I wish I could find that clip because to me, it’s probably the best rendition of the song I’ve ever heard. No luck so far.

A coincidence, though: on a recent road trip, my toddler insisted that we spend the hours with Mommy singing. and the one song that kept coming to me – mainly because I know nearly all the words, and because I know that this is the sort of beat that will appeal to my daughter – was Dama dam mas qalandar. It was such a hit with her that even now, every other day, I’m asked to sing it. This kid’s got good taste!

Enjoyed reading this well researched post and listening to the various renditions, though some did not play. I liked Runa Laila’s rendition a lot, perhaps because I watched her live back in the 70s.
It is heart wrenching to read about the music director behind the song. Like Madhu, I took it be a traditional folk tune. It saddens to listen to him. I have a new respect for Lata Mangeshkar who fought for royalty for the songs. So many great music directors, actors also ended up in poverty in India. Too bad that the show biz industry forgets their own. Looking forward to part 2.

Neeru, I like Runa Laila’s rendition, too, and I like Runa Laila in general. I see that a lot of people have identified the song with her. I’ve also posted her rendition of this song on this blog before.

It is very troubling to read about Ashiq Hussain’s fate.

Regarding Lata Mangeshkar, she fought for royalties, but many people say she fought to dominate the world of Hindi film music in other ways, too, some not so nice. It could be that in many cases, to really stay on top or even stay afloat, one has to have a kind of personality that will have this negative side, too. And many artists do not at all have these qualities needed to stay on top of things – which qualities have nothing to do with the those needed for the art, whether it’s composing, singing, writing, etc. (When I start talking about writing and related things, I could talk about personal experiences, too, but I won’t here, not right now. :) I could talk about the system, but this isn’t really the blog for that.) It’s not a problem limited to South Asia, either. Maybe Hollywood has fewer tales like these, but I believe there are some, and there are many other tales of riches-to-rags (or at least relative-comfort-to-rags) ruin to be found – among many different kinds of people. In fact, that tale is becoming more common now in the west and the U.S.

Richard,
You have surpassed yourself! Congratulations and thanks for this wonderful post. For most of us in India, this song was synonymous with Runa Laila. Later, another variant, which is probably an altogether different song, that became humongously popular globally was Dam mast Qalandar mast mast by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Is there any link between the two songs, besides Qalandar?
AK

Thank you for the nice words, AK. I am very glad to see that you liked this one so much.

Regarding the version by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, etc….

It’s a bit confusing. Going by Wikipedia – which seems as good as any source that I could find on this – the song that I always referred to as “Lal Meri Pat” is based on the poem known as “Dama Dam Mast Qalandar” and is generally called that, and the “…Mast Mast” song is based on that poem also, so “variation” would be a good term, but a lot of people don’t even seem to distinguish them. Nate’s post talked about the “Mast Mast” variation but cited the same poem, with the same lyrics, beginning with O “al meri pat…” I think that the Kathak dance by V. Anuradha Singh is also backed up by this variation, and that’s why I wondered if it should be included – because I didn’t hear Ashiq Hussain’s melody in there at all. (I realized this while going through all the songs together after I wrote the post. But as I said, the dance is so good, I am reluctant to take it down…. I haven’t really decided, so I threw in a bracketed statement for now that kind of interrupts the flow of the post. :) ]

One thing I have noticed is that a lot of people go into a sort of improvisational chant at the end of “Lal Meri Pat,” and this better matches the “Mast Mast” song. I am guessing that the improvisational chant is the thing that was always done at Lal Shahbaz Qalandar’s shrine, etc., before Ashiq Hussain gave the world his particular meoldy.

I am going to add this clip because I just found it on YouTube and it had been posted on exactly the day of the Urs… This is a rendition by the remarkable British singer Tanya Wells. I have been enjoying her performances of ghazals for a while, and she may be the subject of an upcoming post sometime soon.

Swarup, thank you for the link. I have not seen this site, but I am pretty sure I’ve seen all of these clips. A while back, I did a post that consisted entirely of Noor Jehan singing dhamals. I can’t find it at the moment. I may have deleted it because most of the clips disappeared. (I think these film clips disappear a lot – but they also get replaced a lot.)

I found the post that I was talking about. The search worked when I tried a different spelling. My post came out in 2011. I think our posts – or, rather, my post and the search that your post linked to – have two songs in common, but one of them was a clip I used that was dropped. (Most of the clips are still up.) I am pretty certain that I never saw your post on the subject – although I certainly would have been interested at the time, considering that I’ve been posting regularly about Noor Jehan since 2008. It’s just another uncanny coincidence! :)

Thanks Richard for the links. My introduction was through a blog called Crazyfinger, now the blog is gone but I got to know the guy, a Telugu IT professional in USA who does not normally write about music. It was the Noor Jehan one from the film that you linked above. I was bowled over and searched for her other Sufi related songs. It may have been around that time I found your blog, I India references to your blog from that year. Meanwhile some bad news Amjad Sabri was shot dead.

I had gotten into Sufi and qawwali music in the ’90s, though I did not really have the same knowledge of the genres and traditions back then. I got a CD of the greatest hits of Abida Parveen in ’97, and I played many times over the years. Of course, I was familiar with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and also some fusion versions of Dam Dam Mast Qalandar (both of the variations talked about above).
I probably did hear Noor Jehan, but I wasn’t conscious of her and her role in films back then.

The first person I corresponded with about old “Bollywood” in the blogging world was Suzy aka Sitaji of Bollywood Food Club, who’d found my blog while researching mujras in the fall of 2007. She introduced me to Greta/Memsaab, who was just starting her blog, too, and a few others within the next few months, and soon I was in the community and also well on my way to obsessing about this stuff. Suzy recommended Mihir Bose’s book Bollywood: A History, which had come out just recently, and I hunted it down and read it with much interest. I found the section about Noor Jehan particularly intriguing (part of it actually consisted of the notorious quotes from Manto – though it would be a few years before I finally got to read Stars from Another Sky), and I think that’s why I started looking for Noor Jehan a lot (sometime in 2008). I think I also saw the Noor Jehan-on-Naghma “Lal Meri Pat” somewhere around that time, too.

A few of these blogs that we know about got started in 2008-09. And this one didn’t really get started as a blog for old Indian films until the beginning of 2008 (though the blog, in general, had started six months before – coming up on its ninth anniversary)… I’ve talked about this before, wondering if there was something in the air at the time…

Well, it’s always fun to recount that history in one way or another. It’s not so fun to talk about what happened to Amjad Sabri. Yes, that is horrible news. I was actually planning post something in this comments section tonight. That will come next.

Follow Blog via Email

Join 101 other followers

Contact:

If you would like to contact me, e-mail to chardsinger [at] yahoo.com. I also have a Facebook timeline, where I have been spending too much time. (But it is only partially like this blog in terms of subject matter.) Anyway, especially if you know me somewhat, and you are on Facebook, you might want to connect there. Send an e-mail so that we can talk more about it and maybe exchange URLs to "friend."